How to Join Multiple Avi Files

When I was first looking into movies online I would always stray away from files that were split. It was just easier to use and have one file, plus I thought it would take incredibly long to join them. Unfortunately, I then ran across a file that was split into two files and had to find a way to join them so that when I burned them to a disc, it wouldn't be two separate parts. After some careful searching, I found out it was much easier then I had originally expected.

First and foremost, you need to make sure you have the proper codec for your video files. A codec is a video rendering system which can encode/decode video and is used in many of today's video files. To properly view them, you have to have the codec that was used when encoding the video. The best place to get the majority of current release codecs is the K-Lite Codec Pack. They have four different versions a basic, standard, full and corporate. The one with the most codecs is the full K-Lite Codec Pack and I recommend this, but if you want just a few codecs or know which codec your video has, you can choose the lighter ones. To download this file, go to codecpackguide.com.

Next, you will need to download a program called VirtualDUB. This is the program that you will use to join your files together and you can download the file by clicking here. One note before we begin, if your video files are of different framerates, codecs or resolutions, the basic VirtualDUB won't work. You will need a workaround called VirtualDUBMOB. I'll discuss this at a later time. Now that you have your files, codes and software, let's get started.

The first step is to open your video file in VirtualDUB. To do so, go to File, Open Video File and open the first video in the series. Once it is open, you will see two screens and a little slider beneath it. Move the slider to the very end of the frame for the first movie. It's very important to make sure you move it to the end so as not to cut off any video or your joining of files won't work. Then you would go to File, Append AVI segment. The file browser should open and this is when you would select the second video file that attaches to your video. If you experience any problems during this section, this is where you would need VirtualDUBMOD. Make sure you repeat this section for each additional file that you want to join and once that is done, you are on to the last section.

Do not forget this step or your file could end up being gigabytes huge and unable to save it to a DVD-R or CD-R if you are wanting to do so. The final steps in which to join your files are go to the Video menu, select Direct Stream Copy then to the Audiomenu, Direct Stream Audio. It's very important even if each direct stream copy is checked when you go into the menus to still click on them, otherwise your video joining will fail.

To save your completed file just to go file, save as avi and save it to a name that you can remember. Congratulations, you just joined avi files! Now if when you went to add your additional files and you received an error message, you will need to download VirtualDUBMOB. You can download this program from here.

Once you have installed VirtualDUBMOB, you will need to start over by opening up the first avi file you are working with. You do this the same way as you would with VirtualDUB by going to File, Open Video File. Once the video is open you could get a message asking you if you want to rewrite the header of your video. For best results, you want to choose no at this particular time. This is where much of what was done with VirtualDUB will be repeated with VirtualDUBMOD. You would then move the slider all the way to the right to get to the end of the first video's frame, open up any additional files and repeat these steps as above until all files have been added (remember File, Append Avi Segment).

The final steps would be going to Video, Direct Stream Copy, but unlike VirtualDub there isn't any need to do an audio direct stream. After this is done, you are ready to save your file as an avi. How long the file completion takes is based upon your computers specifications. Those with faster computers will have their files encoded faster and vice versa for those with slower computers. Once this is done, you are now able to view your video as one complete file.

As you can see as long as you have the right software and codecs, it doesn't take long to join avi files together. It's fairly simple and anyone with a little bit of patience can do it.